Years have passed and only sounds of waters have come to my ears,
To-day, indeed, I may even count the ripples around the fishing net.
[This poem may seem a little obscure. It means that her own life had been lived long in a kind of dreamland of her own creating, but was gradually emerging into reality.]
If, as I am doing now, I continue to write down events four or five years after they have happened, my life will seem to be that of a pilgrim, but it is not so. I am jotting down the happenings of several years. In the spring I went to Kurama Temple. It was a soft spring day, with mist trailing over the mountain-side. The mountain people brought tokoro In Gods-absent month I went again, and the mountain views along the way were more beautiful than before, the mountain-side brocaded with the autumn colours. The stream, rushing headlong, boiled up like molten metal and then shattered into crystals. When I reached the monastery the maple leaves, wet with a shower, were brilliant beyond compare. The pattern of the maple leaves in Autumn dyed with the rain— After two years or so I went again to Ishiyama. It seemed to be raining, and I heard some one saying rain is disagreeable on a journey, but on opening the door I found the waning moon lighting even the depths of the ravine. What I thought rain was the stream rippling below the roots of the trees. The sound of the mountain brook gives an illusion of rain drops, The next time I went to Hasé Temple, my journey was not so solitary as before. Along the route various persons invited me to ceremonious dinners, and we made but slow progress. The autumn woods were beautiful at the Hahasono forest in Yamashiro. I crossed the Hasé River. We stayed there for three days. This time we were too many to lodge in that small house on the other side of the Nara Pass, so we camped in the field. Our men passed the night lying on mukabaki[73] spread on the grass. They could not sleep for the dew which fell on their heads. The moon clear and more picturesque than elsewhere. Even in our wandering journey,
Beautiful in the deep mountain!
Yet the calm of the waning moon shines over all.
The lonely moon accompanies us lighting us from the sky,
The waning moon I used to gaze at in the Royal City.